For educational purposes
In the dark days of summer 1940 Winston Churchill set up the Special Operations Executive to "set Europe ablaze".
Its task was to nurture and support the resistance movements springing up across Occupied Europe. It also operated in the Middle and Far East.
The brave men and women of SOE operated under constant threat to their lives, but were responsible for some remarkably successful blows against the Axis enemy.
In the dark days of summer 1940 Winston Churchill set up the Special Operations Executive to "set Europe ablaze".
Its task was to nurture and support the resistance movements springing up across Occupied Europe. It also operated in the Middle and Far East.
The brave men and women of SOE operated under constant threat to their lives, but were responsible for some remarkably successful blows against the Axis enemy.
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LearningTranscript
00:30The
00:5627th of February, 1943. Eight men move stealthily through snowbound woods deep in Nazi-occupied
01:03Norway.
01:06The tide of war is turning against Germany. One of its armies has just surrendered at
01:11Stalingrad. Soon this small team will inflict another shattering blow, but one which will
01:18remain secret until the end of the war.
01:23Its target is the secret plant where heavy water, a crucial ingredient for Hitler's atomic
01:28bomb, is in full production.
01:39Evading the German guards, the attackers enter the complex. In the room where the heavy water
01:48is being produced, they lay explosive charges.
01:59The saboteurs then get away undetected, leaving a British tommy gun as a calling card.
02:17The Nazis' hopes of producing an atomic bomb have been seriously disrupted.
02:23The men who carried out this daring mission were Norwegian agents of the British Special
02:28Operations Executive. Their raid, and the follow-up to destroy all remaining stocks
02:33of heavy water, was SOE's most vital achievement during the war.
02:38SOE deployed its agents throughout the countries occupied by German, Italian and Japanese forces.
02:48Their main task was to support local resistance movements, and to do everything they could
02:52to hamper the Axis war effort. Although they worked in secret, the men and women of SOE
02:58and the resistance movements were among the bravest gladiators of World War II.
03:06By the end of June 1940, almost the whole of continental Europe, apart from the Balkans
03:11in the southeast, was under the sway of the Axis. Britain and her overseas empire stood
03:17alone. Yet even though Britain itself was now threatened by German invasion, Prime Minister
03:22Winston Churchill was determined to strike back. To do so, he formed the Commandos to
03:29raid the coastline of occupied Europe. But Churchill also believed that encouraging
03:45widespread revolt in the occupied countries would play a vital part in the defeat of Nazism.
03:56An organisation was needed to build and coordinate this.
04:05In July 1940, the Departments in Military Intelligence and the War Office, which looked
04:10after clandestine warfare, were combined to become the Special Operations Executive, or
04:16SOE. Churchill instructed it to set Europe ablaze, but this was not popular with its
04:22former masters. They didn't like it. We had been told to set Europe ablaze, and of course
04:31what they wanted was complete peace and quiet in the areas where their agents were at work
04:38collecting information. The last thing they wanted in any given area was sabotage and
04:45something being blown up and tremendous reaction from the Gestapo. SOE's headquarters was set
04:51up in an anonymous building in London's Baker Street, and its first battle was to survive
04:56the bureaucratic infighting in Whitehall. SOE was basically organised into operations
05:03and support departments. The former controlled agents through individual country or region
05:08desks, while the latter provided the necessary weapons and equipment. The support department
05:17developed its own catalogue. In addition to weapons and explosives, items such as exploding
05:25cigarettes, itching powder for German underwear, and even exploding rats could be supplied.
05:35The support department was also responsible for forging all the identity cards, passes,
05:40ration cards, and other documents without which no one could survive in occupied Europe.
05:50At first, agents were given clothing taken from refugees who reached Britain, but soon
06:02the support department had to develop its own camouflage section. This specialised in
06:07producing clothing to continental patterns. Every detail, such as the alignment of a
06:17collar stud hole, had to be correct. Nothing which might betray the origin of an agent
06:22could be overlooked. Every article of clothing had to have all English marks removed, including
06:32zip fasteners on the flies, because they used to have lightning zip on nearly all of them.
06:44All that had to be taken out with a dentist's drill, because that would have been a giveaway
06:49straight away if an agent was captured. So it was a very, very thorough job because a
06:56man's life depended on it. The men and women whose lives would depend
07:01on it were SOE's principal asset, the agents who would be sent into the depths of enemy
07:06held territory. The essential requirement for SOE's agents
07:18was obviously that they should be fluent in the language of the country in which they
07:21were to work, and have a good knowledge of its ways. But beyond that, the selection procedure
07:27was surprisingly relaxed and informal, as Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, who ran F-Section,
07:32which covered France, explains. Obviously, you put them through a fairly detailed examination
07:41of their lives, what they'd done and why they'd done it, and their motivations. Then you had
07:47to judge on your own. You had to say, I think this chap would do it, or I don't think this
07:53chap would do it. To do it, the recruiters were looking for
07:57a special type of courage, as Vera Atkins, who worked for F-Section, later described.
08:03Surviving agents often played down their role. What was very brave and particular to them
08:11was to go behind enemy lines, in civilian clothes, without any backup, and absolutely
08:20on their own. That is where that particular bravery comes in.
08:24I never thought of myself as brave, particularly. But looking back, I'm amazed at the things
08:33I did, or lived through. I shouldn't have liked myself if I hadn't
08:39done it, I think. It was the only way to get our country liberated.
08:45We were all very young, you see, all around about 20 to 30, and full of ideals. That's
08:54what kept us going. We had ideals. After selection, agents were trained at a
09:00number of secret centres, usually requisitioned country houses. They were put through a strenuous
09:10course of fitness training and unarmed combat, had to master a variety of weapons, and had
09:19to become experts in handling explosives. Then agents were given their cover story and
09:33new identity, briefed on Axis security methods, and taught how to live and survive in a largely
09:39hostile environment. Even the most careful training did not always prepare them fully.
09:45I went to Orleans with my reception committee. That's when I saw my first Germans. I turned
09:51round to look at them, and they told me, never, ever do that. Never.
09:58If the worst happened, agents were trained how to react.
10:02If you were caught and being tortured, play for time was the motto. And therefore, using
10:11your imagination about what you knew about your circuit, and what they were likely to
10:16know about your movements, you would try and get 24 hours or longer before they really
10:24started bringing the brilliant to bear on your privates or whatever.
10:30With this chilling reminder of the dangers they faced, the agents were then committed to the field.
10:47Agents were trained to be parachuted into Nazi-occupied territories, or they could be
10:53landed at secret airstrips by aircraft flown by the RAF Special Duties Squadrons.
11:05Once landed, the job of the agents was to establish and coordinate resistance networks.
11:10Francis Caneltz, a former schoolteacher who established a major network in southern France,
11:16described what was needed.
11:18The network was going to operate against limited objectives, industrial sabotage,
11:27attacks on railways, telephone communication, things of this kind, and guerrilla warfare.
11:33That meant you had to find your local leader who was trusted by his people. He had to have
11:40a team of 15 to 20, perhaps a few more, a few less. He had to have his own parachute ground.
11:48He had to have his own means of hiding the arms and equipment that were received and of
11:58distributing it on a local level. As far as possible, he was kept apart, certainly from
12:05an operational point of view, from other cells, so that the contact between the cells was very
12:11largely myself or one or two people in whom I particularly trusted.
12:17The circuit organiser was usually supported by a radio operator and a courier.
12:27Women were often chosen as couriers since they were reckoned less likely to attract suspicion.
12:35A key element in SOE operations was the use of the BBC overseas service. This broadcast to
12:42every country under Axis occupation, enabling coded messages to be sent to the resistance.
12:55SOE was at its most active in Europe, where it experienced many successes,
13:00but also some tragic failures.
13:16Because of its distance from Britain, Eastern Europe was difficult to support.
13:24The free Polish government was eager to do what it could to foster resistance to the Germans.
13:29SOE trained agents were inserted to help the Polish Home Army,
13:32as the resistance was called, and some weapons were dropped.
13:38But when the Home Army rose against its German oppressors in Warsaw,
13:42in August 1944, it was crushed after a bitter six-week battle.
13:47SOE's Polish section did manage to organise some supply drops,
13:51but was largely frustrated by Moscow's unwillingness to allow these to be mounted
13:55from Soviet territory. In Czechoslovakia, SOE did score one significant success.
14:07In September 1941, the ruthless Reinhard Heydrich became governor of Bohemia,
14:12as the Germans called the rump of the country.
14:16His cruelty convinced the Czech government in exile that he must be assassinated,
14:21whatever the cost. The following spring,
14:24two SOE-trained agents were dropped into Czechoslovakia.
14:29On the morning of 27th May 1942, they ambushed Heydrich while he was being driven to work.
14:38After their submachine gun had jammed, the agents managed to wound him with a grenade.
14:42The two men were eventually trapped in a church, and, after a fierce gun battle,
14:47took their own lives, rather than allow themselves to be captured.
14:52In the meantime, Heydrich had died of his wounds.
14:59The Nazi retribution was horrific. More than 5,000 people were killed,
15:05including a few of their family members.
15:08The slaughter of innocent civilians in revenge for resistance activity was common throughout
15:13German-occupied countries. It was a terrible price which often had to be paid if SOE were
15:18to set Europe ablaze. In those parts of Czechoslovakia, the Nazi regime was still in full
15:26force, and the Soviet regime was still in full force.
15:29In those parts of Europe closer to Britain, SOE could be more active. Small and relatively
15:35crowded, Denmark was difficult to penetrate, but from 1943 onwards, resistance became increasingly
15:41effective. SOE organised widespread industrial strikes and sabotage, forcing the Germans
15:48to keep five army divisions in the country to maintain order. These were the first of
15:54SOE intelligence also enabled RAF Mosquito bombers to make pinpoint raids in support
15:59of the Danish resistance. One of their notable successes was an attack on the Gestapo headquarters
16:07in the centre of Copenhagen. Not only were its records destroyed, but several imprisoned
16:12Danish resistance members were able to escape.
16:15The most decisive blow struck by the SOE in Norway was also mounted from the air. The
16:22Norsk hydro plant in Telemark produced deuterium oxide, otherwise known as heavy water, which
16:29was vital for Nazi Germany's atomic bombing of the city.
16:32The Norsk hydro plant in Telemark produced deuterium oxide, otherwise known as heavy
16:38water, which was vital for Nazi Germany's atomic bombing of the city.
16:43After an attempt to sabotage the plant had failed, a group of SOE agents parachuted into
16:48Norway, and on the night of 27 February 1943, they got into the plant unobserved by the
16:55German guards. They made their way to the condenser room and placed their charges.
17:09The fuses were lit, and the raiders made good their escape.
17:23Heavy water production was halted for two months.
17:29The Norsk hydro plant in Telemark produced deuterium oxide, otherwise known as heavy
17:35water, which was halted for two months.
17:42The SOE raiders withdrew into the wilds.
17:52Although pursued by German ski troops, they got clean away. Two of the agents remained
17:57in Norway to monitor German activity.
18:01That November, after a US air attack on the plant, the Germans decided to cease heavy
18:07water production and take the remaining stocks to Germany. The first stage of the journey
18:13involved transporting the heavy water by rail to a nearby lake.
18:21The wagons were loaded on board a ferry to take them across the lake.
18:31But during the previous night, one of the SOE saboteurs who had remained behind managed
18:37to place charges aboard the ferry.
18:41Even though civilian casualties were likely when they exploded, the Norwegian government
18:45in exile had decided that the attack must go ahead.
18:51Once the ferry reached the centre of the lake, the charges detonated.
18:56The railway wagons containing the heavy water sank to the bottom of the lake and put a virtual
19:02end to Hitler's hopes of building an atomic bomb.
19:06The Telemark attacks were arguably SOE's most important successes of the war.
19:14In stark contrast, its activities in Holland led to its greatest disaster.
19:21This began in the late summer of 1941, when an agent was arrested
19:25and a large number of SOE cipher messages seized.
19:29The Germans were able to begin breaking the SOE codes.
19:35Then a double agent helped the Germans to penetrate the network in The Hague.
19:39In March 1942, Herbert Lauers, a recently arrived radio operator, was arrested.
19:47His kaptur, German counterintelligence officer Major Hermann Giskes,
19:51forced him to transmit messages to SOE London.
19:57The German counterintelligence officer, Major Hermann Giskes,
20:01was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison.
20:06Forced him to transmit messages to SOE London.
20:12Even though Lauers deliberately left out his security code to show that he had been captured,
20:16and this was noted in London, the SOE's Dutch section
20:20inexplicably decided that this must just be an oversight.
20:30They continued to send out further agents and announce where these would be landed.
20:36The Gestapo were waiting for them.
20:40Giskes couldn't believe his luck.
20:48The Englandspiel, or England game, as he called his operation,
20:52continued for 20 months.
20:5461 agents were caught, most of whom were shot.
20:58It was not until November 1943 that London finally realised what was happening.
21:06And this was only after two of the arrested agents, Ben Ubinck and Peter Duerlein,
21:10managed to escape and get to neutral Switzerland.
21:18Once there, they went to the British embassy and revealed the whole disastrous story.
21:24Although SOE did send further agents to Holland,
21:28its relations with the Dutch resistance had been badly damaged.
21:33No convincing explanation for this tragic lapse in security has ever been put forward.
21:43Of all the occupied countries of Western Europe, France was always the most important,
21:47for it was here that the Allies planned to begin the liberation of Europe.
21:57Ever stronger German defences meant that this would be an enormously risky task,
22:02one in which the French resistance could play a vital role.
22:12After her defeat in 1940, France was split into two.
22:16The North and West were occupied by the Germans and placed under their military rule.
22:26The remainder of the country had a degree of autonomy
22:31It was somewhat easier for SOE to operate here.
22:35Even so, double agents and the hated Vichy police force, the Milice, were a very real threat.
22:43The latter had no compunction in arresting fellow countrymen suspected of resistance activity.
22:49All over France, industry was devoted to the Nazi war effort,
22:53and this gave SOE one of its greatest opportunities.
22:58Attacks on industrial targets by RAF Bomber Command were proving disastrously inaccurate
23:02and causing widespread civilian casualties.
23:08SOE suggested a coordinated campaign of sabotage against specific targets.
23:14A typical case was the great Le Creusot weapons factory in eastern France near the Swiss border.
23:20In the summer of 1943, two agents, Raymond Bassette and André Jarot,
23:25who had been recruited locally, were parachuted back.
23:29Jarot later explained their aim.
23:33I wanted to attack factories, but not to destroy the factory or its workers.
23:37I wanted to destroy the factory's means of production,
23:41electric transformers, turbines, motors.
23:45They would repair them and I would destroy them again.
23:49I was pleased to do my duty.
23:54SOE had been able to identify the main electrical lines and transformers
23:58which powered what had been called the Krupps of France.
24:04These would be the pinpoint targets.
24:14On the night of 31 August 1943, Bassette and Jarot moved into action.
24:19The transformers, several in remote areas, were unguarded.
24:23Magnet bombs with time fuses were put in position.
24:33Ten transformers were wrecked and Le Creusot put out of action for weeks.
24:38A similar operation was suggested by Harry Ray
24:42after he watched the Peugeot vehicle factory being bombed unsuccessfully.
24:50So I then went to Peugeot, got in touch with Rodolph Peugeot
24:54and said, look, wouldn't it be much more sensible
24:58if we did the sabotage on the ground?
25:03Wouldn't it be much more sensible if we did the sabotage on the ground
25:07and arranged for the RAF not to come again?
25:11He said, fine, yes, I'll put you in touch with somebody
25:15who will get you into the factory to see about the possibility of sabotage.
25:19And after that I never went in again.
25:23There was a small team that organised itself of perhaps half a dozen people
25:27and I provided them with the explosives,
25:31the magnet bombs that you could just put onto a machine
25:35and then with a time fuse arranged for it to go off
25:39half an hour, an hour, two hours later.
25:43Similar action could be taken to disrupt the transport system.
26:02But it didn't always have to involve explosives.
26:06Pegleg used to change the waybirds on these wagons
26:10and so a chap who was hoping to get his sulphuric acid,
26:14say, to Lorient for submarine batteries,
26:18it might turn up in Amiens at a fighter aerodrome
26:22where they were expecting variable pitch propellers or something, you see,
26:26or carburettor parts or God knows what.
26:30The buggeration of that and the frustration is monumental
26:34and how to trace it is very, very difficult.
26:38Oh, Pegleg never got caught.
26:40The growing number of SOE networks all over France
26:43provided valuable intelligence about the position of German units
26:47and kept watch on the building of German coastal defences,
26:51Hitler's much vaunted Atlantic Wall,
26:54for ultimately all resistance activity was directed towards preparing
26:58for the liberation of France and Europe.
27:04Typical of the SOE agents operating in France was Odette Sanson,
27:09a French girl married to an Englishman.
27:12Although she had three young daughters,
27:14Odette had been appalled by the defeat of her country
27:17and volunteered for SOE.
27:20She was taken by boat from Gibraltar to the French Riviera,
27:24which was then under Vichy control,
27:26and landed there at the end of October 1942.
27:34Odette met up with Peter Churchill,
27:36the SOE leader in the area, and became his courier.
27:42Their primary task was to help organise an underground army of 20,000 men,
27:46which the local resistance claimed they could raise.
27:49But this became much riskier when, a few weeks later,
27:52the Germans took over all Vichy areas
27:54following the Allied landings in French North Africa.
28:04Hugo Bleicher, a German counterintelligence officer,
28:08was able to infiltrate the local resistance network.
28:12He took advantage of loose talk to locate and arrest
28:15Churchill and Odette in spring 1943.
28:20The two SOE agents were taken to Paris,
28:23where Odette survived months of excruciating torture
28:26at the hands of the Gestapo,
28:28without revealing anything of importance.
28:30After the war, she spoke of her experiences.
28:33In those places, the only thing one could try to keep
28:37was a certain dignity.
28:40There was nothing else.
28:42And one could just have a little dignity
28:46and try to prove that one had a little spirit,
28:51and I suppose that kept one going.
28:56And when everything was really too difficult, too bad,
29:01then one was inspired by so many things, people.
29:06Perhaps a phrase that one would remember,
29:09that one had heard a long time before,
29:14or even a piece of poetry or a piece of music.
29:21Odette was then sent, under sentence of death,
29:24to Ravensbruck concentration camp north of Berlin,
29:27together with other female SOE agents.
29:32Amazingly, Odette survived further horrors
29:35and was eventually liberated.
29:40But one third of the women agents sent to France
29:43were tortured and killed after capture.
29:45But none ever betrayed anything vital.
29:53During the second half of 1943,
29:56with preparations for the invasion of Normandy underway,
29:59SOE support for the French resistance
30:01became even more important.
30:07Networks and plans were prepared so that once invasion came,
30:11German road and rail communications
30:13running into Normandy from the rest of France
30:15would be severely disrupted.
30:20The Maquis, a secret army of young Frenchmen,
30:23many of whom had taken to the hills of rural France
30:26to avoid being sent to work in Germany,
30:28was being armed and trained to operate in the German rear
30:31and pin down reinforcements.
30:34The number of SOE flights to drop weapons and other supplies
30:37to the networks increased steadily.
30:42But as more and more people became involved
30:46in gathering and hiding the supplies,
30:48so the opportunities for the Germans
30:50to penetrate the resistance grew.
30:55By early 1944, many of the key resistance figures
30:59in northern France were imprisoned in a jail at Amiens.
31:02Unless they could escape,
31:04the resistance in the region would be fatally crippled.
31:12SOE passed the details of the jail wing
31:15in which prisoners were housed to the RAF.
31:21On the morning of 18 February 1944,
31:24Mosquitoes made a daring low-level attack on the prison.
31:33Its walls were breached, enabling 250 prisoners to escape.
31:38The resistance networks were functional again by D-Day.
31:48During the evening of 5 June,
31:50as the Allied invasion force approached the Normandy coast,
31:53the resistance networks established by SOE were called to arms.
31:57Long-awaited messages were heard on the BBC.
32:01I was in the hay of a loft
32:04and I really didn't even bother to go down the ladder
32:07but jumped down so as to tell everybody about it
32:12because this was the culminating moment, really, of our mission.
32:17They went round, got all their material out of the hiding places,
32:22cleaned the weapons, stuck the ammunition
32:26and then they were ready to move the next day
32:29because the message came so quickly.
32:34A carefully planned campaign of sabotage
32:37on the routes leading into Normandy from the south began.
32:40This film, secretly taken by the resistance,
33:05shows a German troop train derailed at Champigny, near Paris,
33:09and blocking a munitions train in a siding.
33:16One example of a resistance operation to slow down German reinforcements
33:20was that against the Das Reich Waffen-SS division.
33:23This started with tracking down the wagons
33:26on which its panzers should have been transported from southern France.
33:30These wagons were very, very important
33:34because they were putting three or four in one little station on a siding,
33:38three or four in another, they were dispersed everywhere.
33:41They hardly stayed more than a day or two days in Mont-de-Martigny.
33:47To deal with this,
33:49Tony Brooke's network came up with a novel and effective method of attack.
33:57Old Michel converted some grease guns,
34:00flattened them, made a fishtail at the end,
34:03and we mixed salvaged grease with carborundum powder
34:07in the garage and masses of it.
34:09And then this was handed out to various people, young people,
34:13including one of his daughters,
34:15to go round and vaccinate these wagons.
34:18The vaccinations proved totally effective.
34:21The bearings on the wagons soon seized up,
34:24and the Das Reich was obliged to set off for Normandy by road.
34:28Other parts of the resistance now went into action.
34:31The Marquis and the Corrèze and the Croze delayed it.
34:36Then they had the massacre of Oradeau-sur-Glane,
34:39and then they got delayed north of Limoges,
34:42and then they got delayed when they got to the Loire.
34:45They had planned to get to Normandy, to Caen, in four days.
34:49They took 16.
34:51SOE also coordinated similar operations
34:54to coincide with the successful Allied landings
34:57in the south of France in August 1944.
35:01During the rapid drive north of American and French forces,
35:06the resistance acted as guides
35:08and provided information about the position of German formations.
35:14SOE was also deeply involved elsewhere in the Mediterranean.
35:19In 1941, it set up a separate headquarters in Cairo
35:23to cover the Middle East and the Balkans.
35:25This took over some of the special forces tasks of headquarters Middle East.
35:31The main project that SOE inherited
35:34was to help in the liberation of Italian-held Abyssinia.
35:39Playing a major role was Colonel Ord Wingate,
35:42who later founded the Chindits.
35:44Accompanied by exiled Abyssinian Emperor Haile Selassie,
35:47he led a force of Abyssinians and Sudanese
35:50in a highly successful thrust into Abyssinia from Sudan.
35:56The crowning moment came on the 5th of May, 1941,
35:59when Wingate and his men escorted the Emperor
36:02into his capital, Addis Ababa.
36:08SOE could take some credit for this success,
36:11but its reputation in Cairo did not benefit.
36:18From the start, its headquarters was notoriously inefficient
36:22and lacked security.
36:24No Egyptian cab driver appeared to know where it was.
36:30SOE's main problem was that it lacked good intelligence,
36:33largely because the British secret intelligence service
36:36was unwilling to pass on any information.
36:39What intelligence SOE did gain was not trusted by London.
36:43Nowhere was this more apparent than in the Balkans.
36:49Following the German occupation of Yugoslavia,
36:51two distinct resistance groups formed.
36:54One, known as the Chetniks,
36:56was led by Royalist Colonel Draza Mihailovic.
37:01The other was under the iron grip of Communist Josip Tito.
37:06Initially, the British government supported Mihailovic,
37:09but after a series of SOE-arranged missions,
37:12culminating with a visit by Churchill's special representative,
37:15Fitzroy Maclean, support was transferred to Tito and his partisans.
37:21As Churchill put it, they seemed to be killing more Germans.
37:37In Greece, too, resistance was fractured,
37:40with the Communist-backed ELAS movement
37:42being rivaled by the anti-monarchist but democratic EDES.
37:47SOE in Cairo had little knowledge of this,
37:51as became clear during the mounting
37:53of one of its most successful operations in Greece.
37:56In September 1942,
37:58SOE were asked to cut the railway line
38:01which ran down through Greece to the port of Piraeus
38:04to support the planned offensive by the Eighth Army at El Alamein.
38:08This had been identified as one of the most important supply routes
38:12for Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps.
38:17SOE selected Eddie Myers,
38:20a regular engineer officer
38:22with little experience of clandestine operations,
38:25to lead the party.
38:27His second in command was Chris Woodhouse,
38:30a classical scholar who had already operated in Greece.
38:35The team was given hasty parachute training,
38:38and after one abortive attempt,
38:40its members parachuted into Greece
38:42in the early hours of 1st October.
38:47Their target was one of three railway bridges,
38:51Papadia,
38:53Assopos
38:55and Gorgopotamos,
38:57but they knew little about them.
38:59Myers and his men were beset by problems
39:02from the moment they landed.
39:06First, they were supposed to meet an EDES leader
39:09called Napoleon Zervas,
39:11but he was not there to receive them.
39:13They had been dropped in the wrong place.
39:17Then, one of Myers' three four-man teams
39:20could not locate the dropping zone
39:22and returned to Egypt.
39:24Myers sent Woodhouse to find Zervas,
39:27giving him 14 days to do so,
39:29but this meant passing through territory controlled by Elas.
39:32Given the nature of the terrain,
39:34Woodhouse's mission seemed almost impossible.
39:39Woodhouse later described the conditions
39:41Woodhouse later described the confusions
39:43with which he was faced
39:45as a result of inadequate intelligence.
39:47Zervas was nowhere near the area mentioned in my orders,
39:51and more serious still,
39:53I was told nothing by SOE or anybody else
39:56about the complex political relations
39:59and rivalries of the Greek guerrillas,
40:01nor even their names,
40:03which later were to become so familiar to us.
40:07Nevertheless, he found Zervas
40:09and brought both his men and the rival local Elas group
40:12back to the base camp.
40:15The missing SOE team,
40:17which had successfully dropped three days later,
40:19was also located.
40:25In the meantime, Myers had carried out a reconnaissance.
40:28He decided that the team would attack
40:30the precipitous Gorgopotamus Bridge.
40:40The SOE team and its Greek resistance supporters
40:42moved into position at the Gorgopotamus Bridge
40:44on the evening of the 25th of November.
40:47Local villagers helped them transport
40:49the necessary explosives to their target,
40:51and supply trains chugged overhead
40:53as these were put in position.
41:00The Andates, as the Greek resistance fighters were called,
41:04engaged the Italian guard posts covering the bridge.
41:10Then came the signal that the bridge was about to be blown.
41:23The destruction of the Gorgopotamus Bridge
41:26was an SOE triumph,
41:28not least in getting the rival resistance factions to cooperate.
41:32Unfortunately, by then,
41:34Rommel had already been driven back from El Alamein.
41:40Another blow was that the submarine
41:42that was supposed to take Myers and his men back to Egypt
41:45did not appear.
41:47They were therefore ordered to remain in Greece
41:49to provide training for the Andates.
41:53In the meantime,
41:55Axis reprisals against the local population
41:57deterred the Andates from further action
41:59against the Germans and Italians.
42:04Despite this, in June 1943,
42:06the SOE agents did attack another of the railway bridges.
42:12This was Asopos,
42:14whose position on the side of a steep gorge
42:16made it a much more difficult target
42:18than the Gorgopotamus Bridge.
42:21Luckily, scaffolding had been erected
42:23to enable repairs to be carried out,
42:25and this enabled the agents to place their charges.
42:30Once again, the SOE's target was destroyed.
42:35But after this second success,
42:37the Andates became increasingly involved
42:39in fighting among themselves.
42:41This eventually degenerated into civil war
42:44at the end of 1944,
42:46after Greece had been liberated.
42:51SOE was also active in the far east
42:53from a base in Australia,
42:55after Japanese forces had overrun
42:57British, Dutch and American possessions in the area.
43:00The problems which it faced there
43:02were very different from those in Europe.
43:05The often inaccessible jungle,
43:07which covered so much of the region,
43:09made it difficult to maintain agents.
43:17While in the towns and cities,
43:19a western agent stood out like a sore thumb.
43:26One very successful operation
43:28against Singapore harbour
43:30was led by Captain Ivan Lyon.
43:36His group of saboteurs set sail from Australia
43:39on Operation Jaywick,
43:41in a captured Japanese fishing boat,
43:43in August 1943.
43:48After an epic three-week voyage
43:50across 2,000 miles of Japanese-controlled seas,
43:53they were able to reach an island
43:55off Singapore undetected.
44:01There they set up camp
44:03and unloaded the kayaks
44:05which they had brought with them.
44:14On the evening of the 26th of September, 1943,
44:17three kayaks slipped across the channel to the port.
44:25They attached limpet mines
44:27to the hulls of a number of merchant vessels
44:29and got away undetected.
44:4050,000 tonnes of enemy shipping had been sunk,
44:43but a second attempt a year later was a disaster,
44:46with Lyon and all his party
44:48either killed or captured by the Japanese
44:50and later executed.
44:55In Malaya, SOE agent Freddy Spencer Chapman
44:58who knew the country well,
45:00was able to set up a resistance network.
45:04This was made up of indigenous Chinese
45:06who were keen to avenge the atrocities
45:08being perpetrated by the Japanese in China.
45:13Spencer Chapman and his men
45:15waged a lengthy campaign
45:17against Japanese communications in Malaya.
45:19Bridges were blown,
45:21convoys were ambushed,
45:23and large numbers of Japanese troops
45:25tied down far from the fighting fronts.
45:29In Burma, SOE and its American equivalent,
45:33the Office of Strategic Services,
45:35made much use of the hill tribes
45:37in the north of the country.
45:39During the latter stages of the Burma campaign,
45:41the tribesmen mounted numerous attacks
45:43and ambushes on the withdrawing Japanese,
45:46killing some 14,000 of them.
45:54During World War II,
45:56SOE operated throughout the world.
45:58Its efforts with the various resistance movements
46:00played a vital part in bringing about
46:02ultimate victory over the Axis powers.
46:07But many SOE agents lost their lives.
46:10Of more than 400 sent to France alone,
46:13one quarter did not return.
46:15Others suffered severe torture.
46:20Their contribution was recognized
46:22by numerous awards for bravery.
46:25Among these was a George Cross,
46:28Britain's highest civilian decoration for gallantry,
46:31given to Odette Sansom
46:33for her exemplary conduct in captivity
46:35under extreme duress.
46:40The life of the SOE agent was a lonely one,
46:43lived amid constant danger.
46:45They required a different form of courage
46:47from that of the soldier on the battlefield.
46:50Nonetheless, they were true gladiators.
47:50© transcript Emily Beynon